Sandy Brown

Who’s Sandy Brown? Uh, don’ know… but the trails up on Brown Mountain are getting pretty sandy this time a year making the steep sections more challenging on ascent and the corners treacherous on descent. You’ve really got to take the corners slow and upright or else. I probably need to drop the air pressure in my tires to counter this. I tend to run pretty high pressures for a mountain biker. I guess this is partly because I ride to the trailhead, too, and I don’t want to be riding the pavement on 25psi and I’m certainly not going to mess with changing the pressure when I get to (and off) the trail. I usually run about 60psi. This makes for a ripping fast ride in the winter when the trails have some moisture in them. It’s pretty much all decomposed granite up there so it never gets real muddy – the rain just makes it set. But we haven’t had any significant rain down here for months, really, and we’re quickly entering into the cycle of heat, sun, smog, and fire. Maybe this is an okay thing though. Aside from it being totally natural for this area, it tends to clear the trails of people and lately I’ve encountered way too many people up there – especially those damned mountain bikers!